ERIC ED030346: Slavonic Names in Greek and Roman Antiquities. Onomastica, Number 37.

FL 001 358

ED 030 346

By-Sot.roff. G. * . M . , 7

Slavonic Names in Greek and Roman Antiquities. Onomastica, Number 6 /.

Canadian Inst, of Onomastic Sciences. Winnipeg (Manitoba).. Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences
Pub Date 69

Note -23p.

EDRS Price MF -$0.25 HC-S 1.25 . , rrppk

Descriptors --Classical Languages, Classical Literature, Diachronic Linguistics, -pymol^y. Greek. Cree
Civilization, Indo European Languages, Latin, Lexicology. Linguistics. -Onomastics. -Slavic Language

Listed in this pamphlet are 22 place and personal names of Slavic o r ' 9 "\which
appear in Greek and Roman documents. Following a brief introduction m which the
crd P e4 for selection of these names is given, a section discusses the inconsistent
systems of transliteration employed by classical authors. Then, the actual
listing of names precedes a concluding digression which proposes to apply so<ne °t
the findmqs to historical analysis. Included in an appendix are--(l) a trilingual list of
names. (2) textual notes, and (3) availability information for other publications in the

series. (GK)

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ERIC

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FL 001 36T

ONOMASTIC A
No. 37

G. SOT1ROFF

SLAVONIC NAMES IN GREEK
AND ROMAN ANTIQUITIES

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION & WELFARE
OFFICE OF EDUCATION

THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRODUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE
PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGINATING IT. POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONS
STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT OFFICIAL OFFICE OF EDUCATION
POSITION OR POLICY.

Quebec 1 9 6 9 Winnipeg

Published by the Canadian Institute of Onomastic Sciences
and the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences,

N. B.

References to chapters and sections of basic works
(e. g. Herodotus , Livy , Pliny) are given, where con-
venient, in parentheses, within the text itself. Other
references and lengthier notes ivill be found at the
end of this article. A trilingual list of names —
Slavonic, Latin, and Greek — will be found in the
appendix.

G. S.

Publisher’s Note :

Following the author's wish the name “Slavonic”
(instead of the usual in this series: “Slavic”) was
employed in the text of the present issue of Ono -

mastica.

Printed by Trident Press Ltd., Winnipeg, Man. Canada.

FL 601 3£S EDO 30346

ERRATA

PAGE LINE READS SHOULD READ

( — from Bottom)

5

2

Gcorgious

Georgius

5

6

consonnance

consonance

5

13

consorinance

consonance

6

13

consonnant

consonant

6

—2

Syrillic

Cyrillic

7

11

people

peoples

9

15

Greaks

Greeks

9

18

nome

name

10

—6

middle which

middle of which

11

22

At tny rate

At any rate

12

9

Latin from

Latin, form

12

10

liuhiti, “love"

liubitl, “to love”

13

16—17

lincjuistic.

linguistic

15

3

Greek

Greeks

15

18

knife of

knife

15

—3

four hoses

four horses

16

—6

solves for

selves for

17

—6

Greek and Rome

Greek and Roman

20

17

Less Belles Lettres

Los Belles Lettres

I. Introduction

1. If we are to believe Georgious Codinus, some five cen-
turies before the translation of Scripture by the brothers
Cyril and Methodius, Constantine the Great founded “in the
land of the Scythians”, four cities, two of which had names
with a distinctly Slavonic consonnance — Peresthlaba and
Pliscuba. 1 Many more Slavonic names can be spotted in
Greek and Latin sources, some of which go as far back as
the time of Herodotus, and some still further back. This
study is concerned with a selection of twenty-two such
names of persons, tribes, and landscape feature. The
criteria for including a name in this list are the following:
(a) a Slavonic consonnance; (b) a recognizable meaning
in Slavonic; (c) no recognizable, or an unfitting, meaning
in Greek or Latin; (d) a geographical and historical set-
ting suggesting the presence of Slavonic ethnic elements.
The list could easily be doubled.

2. Before discussing the names themselves, it seems ap-
propriate to say a few words about some problems of spel-
ling and transliteration. Following the list of names, the
reader will find, in section IV, a historical digression,
capable of throwing additional light on the linguistic ge-
ography of the area in which these names occur.

II. Spelling and Transliteration

3. The student of early Greek and Latin sources will be
disappointed if he expects to locate in them all Slavonic
names in exactly the same shape in which one meets them

5

in contemporary literature. Writing over 2,000 years ago,
Marcus Terrentius Varro observed that not every word-
form which once existed still exists; that age tends to blot
some words out; that not every word which chances to
survive does so in its original form, and that many words
are disguised by displacement affecting individual letters.-
What was true 2,000 years ago is no less so today. Many
of the names modern readers would be interested in have
been altered through phonetic adaptation, or through “im-
provements” in the spelling. In antiquity, Phoenician
names, for instance, were changed by the Greeks so as to
suit Greek phonetics. The Greek language did not allow
a word to end in a consonnant other than r, s, or n. Thus,
Hannibal was put down as Annibas, Hasdrubal became
Asdroubas, Maharbal — Maarbas. It was not until the
triumph of Christianity that Greek writers began to trans-
literate more accurately the foreign names from Scripture.
However, changes continued to occur in names recorded
in Latin sources. Thus, the name of bishop Ulfila, who is
credited with the invention of the Gothic alphabet, is
usually spelled Ulfila, but sometimes also Ulphilas, Wulfila,
Guilfula, and Ourfila. The later spelling occurs also in
Greek sources.

4. An additional difficulty for the student of old names
arises from the fact that neither the Greek nor the Latin
alphabet were designed with a view to rendering accurately
the sounds of the so-called barbarian languages. The
Slavonic vowels T> and T>I simply did not exist in either
Greek or Latin. The Greeks rendered T>I as OI, the Romans
as a straight I. 3 The consonnants B and V (Cyrillic B and
B) were indistinguishable in Greek, whose letter “beta”
had the phonetic value of the English W. Thus, when
the Greeks had to write the name of Vespasian, they
wrote Ouespasianos; Valens became, in Greek, Ouales. 4
The Greeks seem to have been particularly embarrassed
by sibilants like the ones later on expressed by the Syrillic
letters >K, H and III, which they could not hear distinctly,

6

let alone pronounce, or write correctly. With this in mind,
the student of Classical Greek has no trouble at all recog-
nizing that the Greek word SITO means )KHTO. Like-
wise, the Greek THORAX means MOPAFI, i. e. stocking,
greave, or corselet, wheras CHOINIX means IIIHHHK, ap-
proximately a quart-measure.

5. The pronunciation and transliteration of foreign names
did not only give cramps to many ancient writers. It also
gave headaches to many readers. Dio Cassius reports that
when Trajan was sailing down the Red Sea, he kept
writing to the Senate in Rome about the various people
he met on his way. The Senators, according to Dio, “were
unable in some cases to follow him intelligently, or even
to use the names correctly.” 5 Arabian phonetics and Latin
spelling obviously made a poor match. Before Trajan,
Strabo and Pliny the Elder had run into similar problems.
Speaking of the tribes which lived in the Pyrenees, Strabo
wrote: “I shrink from giving too many of the names, shun-
ning the unpleasant task of writing them down — unless
it comports with the pleasure of some to hear ‘Pleutaurans’,
‘Bardyetans’, ‘Allotrigans’, and other names still less pleas-
ing and of less significance than these.” 0 In the same vein,
Pliny, while speaking of Andalusia, says: “Worthy of
mention in this district, or easily pronunced in Latin,
are . . . ”, 7 and he proceeds to enumerate the cities of the
district, whose names he found easy to pronunce in Latin,
presumably leaving out a great many others, which may
have been equally important — or more important — to
the Spaniards themselves. Again, when he speaks of Illyria
— present-day Yugoslavia — Pliny gives the names of
several Illyrian peoples, and adds: “Few of these peoples
are worthy of mention, nor are their names easy to pro-
nounce.” 8 It should not be surprising, therefore, if some
important “barbarian” names are unavailable in our Greek
and Latin sources, while others have come down to us,
sometimes almost intact, and sometimes warped beyond
recognition.

7

6. What is worse is the frequent misuse of poetic licence
— if that is what it is — by many Greek authors. In his
story of Atlantis, Plato explains how it happened that in
some books non-Greek personalities appear under Greek
names. Apparently, Solon, while sojourning in Egypt,
noticed that the men who had first taken down the names
of the Atlantians had translated these names into the
Egyptian tongue. (< So he himself in turn recovered the
original sense of each name and, rendering it in our own
tongue (i. e. Greek — G. S.) wrote it down so. 0 Else-
where, Solon is made to speak of the Egyptian goddess
Neith whose Greek name, he explains, was said to be
Athena.” 10 The real name of Hercules, according to Ptolemy
Hephaistion, was Neilos; 11 according to an anonymous
author who may have been Aurelius Victor, it was Re-
caranus. 12 Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles was also compli-
mented with a ringing Greek name — Neoptolemus.

7. In the light of facts like these, it is obviously not
enough for the student of old Slavonic names to be just a
good Hellenist and a good Latinist. If he is to avoid frustra-
tion, he must learn to read between the lines. He must
train himself to spot the distortions, inflicted on many
Slavonic names by Greek scribes, who seem to have gone
about it with a fury worthy of a modern radio-announcer.
A name may have no known meaning in Greek, or Latin,
or it may have an unsuitable meaning in one of these
languages; if the meaning it has in Slavonic fits the cir-
cumstances, such a name should be taken in for observa-
tion.

111 . The Names

8. The order in which the twenty-two names on our list
are discussed is neither spatial, nor chronological. It aims
to proceed from the more obvious cases to the less obvious

ones.

(1) jiYLAZORA. Livy (XLIV. 26) says that during
the last war of the Romans against Macedonia, King

8

Perseus ordered certain troops to shift their camp to By-
lazora, in Paeonia. Livy probably found this name in
Polybius, who calls this place “a great Paeonian city”
(V. 97). This city is mentioned as still existing in the 15th
century, by Luccari, who points out that its name was
known to Pliny. 1,5 Bylazora, or rather Biela Zora, means
“White Dawn.”

(2) NESTANE. Pausanias (VIII. VII. 4 and VIII. I)
reports that he found, in Arcadia, the ruins of a village, near
which Philip of Macedon had pitched his camp. The name of
this village was Nestane. It is obvious that we have here the
Slavonic words na stane, meaning “in the camp.” Since
these words have no meaning in Greek, it is more than
likely that Pausanias wrote them down as he heard them
from the Greaks living in the vicinity.

(3) GORDIUM. This was the name of the capital of
Phrygia, in Asia Minor. The Phrygians were of Thracian
origin. The Greeks spelled this nome GORDION. Orosius
(III. 16) spells it Gordie. The ending — ION is Greek; it
is used to form diminutives. When that ending is dropped,
what remains is the root GORD-, i. e. gorod, or grad, Ihe
Slavonic word for “city.” One could speculate that the
Greeks formed the diminutive GORDION, to designate the
“little city”, presumably the citadel.

(4) CREMNA. Near the Sea of Azov, Herodotus (IV.
20) knew a place called CREMNI. He explains that this word
meant “the cliffs.” In Slavonic, the word cremen means
“flintstone.” In Pisidia, just south of Phrygia, Strabo (12.
6. and 12. 7. 2.) knew a city called Cremna. We recog-
nize i*a this name the Slavonic word “Kreml”, i. e. a for-
tified city.

(5) CERASUS. Ammianus Mareellinus (XXII. 8. 16)
says that this was the name of a city in Paphlagonia, from
which Lucullus brought to Rome the fruits so named. These
fruits were cherries, in Slavonic chereshi, chereshne, or
treshne. Paphagonia was just a short distance to the north-
east of Phrygia.

9

(6) CONOPA. This was the name of a village in
Aetolia, according to Strabo (10. 2. 22). From another
remark made by the same author, it may be inferred that
Aetolia had a mixed population, partly Greek and partly
Macedonian (10. 1. 15). Conop in Slavonic means “hemp”
which, if it was an important local product, may have given
its name to the village, as cherries gave theirs to the city
of Cerasus.

(7) VERA. Strabo (11. 13. 3) knew a fortress by this
name, in Media, some 120 miles east of the area inhabited
by the Thracian tribe Saraparae. In Slavonic, vera means
“faith.”

(8) LEBEDUS. Strabo (14. 1. 29) places this city in
Lydia. A festival in honour of Dionysus was held there
every year. Dionysus was the Greek name of the Thracian
sun-god Sava, or Sabazios, also known to the Romans under
the name of Pater Liber, or Bacchus. Lebed in Slavonic
means “swan”, and it is conceivable that the name of the
city came from some “swan lake” in the neighborhood.

(9) CALYBE, according to Strabo (7. 6. 2) was the
name of a city in Thrace. In the Slavonic speech of the
people who live in the same area today, kolibe means
“hamlet.” 14

(10) TARNE. Strabo (9. 2. 25) says that there was a
village with that name, in Boeotia. The original inhabitants
of Boeotia are known to have been Thracian . Tame has no
known meaning in Greek, but in Slavonic it means “thorn”,
or “thistles.” There is a city Trn in Western Bulgaria and
another one by the name of Trnovo, in Eastern Bulgaria.
In the Ukraine, we have Tarnopol. A thistle plain near the
city, or perhaps one in the middle which the city itself grew,
may well be responsible for the name.

(11) OLENUS. This was a city in the Peloponessus,
which refused to join the anti-Macedonian alliance formed
by four Greek cities about 280 B. C. At the time of Strabo
(8. 7. 1-5), this city was deserted, but not the nearby

temple of Asclepios. This detail is of some interest, in view
of the Thracian origin usually ascribed to Asclepios. Olen
in Slavonic means “reindeer.”

(12) MORIMARUSA. There is a twisted sentence in
Pliny ( N . H., IV. 95), referring to the Northern Ocean
which, he says, was called by the natives frozen. Pliny
then explains that “according to Philemon, the Cimbrians
call it Morimarusa, which means dead sea ” It could hot
be any clearer that we have here a casual transcription of
the Slavonic words more moroza, which mean exactly what
the natives meant, namely “Frozen Sea.”

(13) SEMELE. This was the name of a daughter of
Cadmus. The last letter in the Greek version of this name
was an “eta”, which was often pronounced “ya.” Semele
appears, thus, as a variation of the Slavonic word zemlya ,
meaning “earth.” It is also interesting to note that the
Greek word for foundations is “themelia.”

(14) MYLITTA. According to Herodotus (I. 131 and
139), this was an Assyrian name of the goddess of love.
There were many Thracian settlements in what was then
called Assyria, and it is more than likely that Herodotus
mistook a Thracian word for an Assyrian one. At tny rate,
the name Militsa in Slavonic means “Dearie.” One should
note, further, that the Greeks often used a double T, when
transliterating the sound “ts.”

(15) SILENUS. An elderly, drunken, satyr was called
a silenus. Anyone who has seen one of these sileni, as
represented on some ancient vases, will easily guess that
silen means “strong”, or “potent.”

(16) ZARINA. This was the name of the queen who
ruled the Scythians to the east of the Caspian Sea, in the
latter part of the 4th century B. C., according to the
report of Ctesias, preserved by Diodorus Siculus (II. 34
3.). What a coincidence that the same word in Slavonic
should mean “queen!”

11

( 17 ) LIBER was the Latin designation of the Thracian
sun-god Sava,, called by the Greek Sabazios, or Dionysus.
The explanation of the Latin name is given by Varro
( De Lingua , VI. 1. 2). Originally, the name was Loebesom ,
where the “s” was changed into “r” — the well-known
rhotacism. Varro also points out that the verb lubere means
“to be pleasing”, and that it was from this verb that
words like lubido and Lubentina derived, the latter being
an epithet of Venus .Lubere is manifestly the Latin from of
the Slavonic verb liubiti, “love”, while Liber /Loebesom,
is no more than the Slavonic adjective liubezen, i. e. “the
friendly one”, or “the lovely one.”

( 18 ) OROLUS. From the Life of Thucydides, by Mar-
kellinos, we learn that Orolus was the father of Thucydides
— a Thracian. This is close enough to the Slavonic word
oriol, or or el, meaning “eagle. ” 14 a

(19) LYDI was the name of the people who lived in
Lydia. We have here an obvious transliteration of the
Slavonic word liudi, i. e. “people.”

(20) NEMETES. Pliny ( N . H., IV. 106) gives a list
of German tribes along the Rhine river, at the top of which
he places the Nemetes, i .e. the people called in Slavonic
“Nemtsi.”

(21) MOLOSSI. This was the name given by the
Greeks to one of the Macedonian tribes in the Epirus. The
Greek spelling of the word is Molottoi. If we replace the
double T by “ts”, we get molotsi, i. e. MOLODSI, or “the
braves”, in Slavonic. Strabo (7. 7. 8) notes that “...the
Molossi became subject to Pyrrhus-Neoptolemus, the son
of Achilles ...” This is an important detail, to which we
shall revert.

(22) ATHAMANI. Next door to the Molodsi, we find
another tribe, which the Greeks called Athamani. The
meaning of this word is not obvious, but can be guessed.
When a white man, in Western Canada, wants to address
an unknown Indian, he does not call: “Hey, you, Indian!”

12

He will rather call: “Hey Chief!” An ataman was a Cossack
chief, the Atamani on the Adriatic coast just might have
been related to the Cossacks, or to their ancestors. Before
we dismiss this hypothesis as a fantastic one, we shall
make a short historical digression.

IV. The Wrath of Achilles and the Flight of Pyrrhus

9. In a letter written around 1325, Nicephorus Gregoras
describes one of his adventures in Macedonia, observing,
among other things, that the people of that country were
“for the most part, from the very beginning, Mysian^ set-
tlers, who live intermingled with our own people.” 10 By
“our own people” Gregoras means, of course, the Greeks. By
“Mysians” he means the Bulgarians of the Danubian plain.
He has no doubt that, in Macedonia, Greeks and Bulgarians
had lived intermingled “from the very beginning.” If
Gregoras is right, we must conclude that no major lin-
quistic shifts have taken place south of the Danube during
any historical period known to us — in which case the
presence of Slavonic names in early Greek sources be-
comes self-explanatory. Is this in any way related to the
presence along the Adriatic coast of Molodsi, Atamani, and
Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles?

10. From Strabo (7. 7. 8), we learn that the Macedonian
language was spoken throughout the Epirus, including the
territory of the Atamani and that of the Molodsi. Again
from him, and from other sources too, we may learn that
Macedonia was part of Thrace, while the language of the
Thracians was the same as that of the Getae, who lived
north of the Danube, and along the north shore of the
Black Sea. lc The Mysians, who lived between the Danube
and the Balkan mountain were known to Homer, who
called them “hand-to-hand fighters.” 17 Throughout an-
tiquity they were invariably considered to be a Thracian
people. We must, therefore, conclude that there was a
linguistically homogeneous block in South-Eastern Europe,
the core of which extended from the Crimean Peninsula
to the Adriatic coast opposite the island of Corfu.

13

11. Tradition has it that at the end of the Trojan War,
Pyrrhus took his abode among the Molodsi, on the Adriatic
Sea. Why should he have done this if he were a Greek?
Why should the Molodsi have accepted him? What is more,
after the assassination of Pyrrhus, at Delphi, his wife
Andromache is said to have been sent by his family to
the country of the Molodsi. The reason for this was that
she was with child by Pyrrhus, and the family feared that
an attempt might be made on her life by one or the other
of the Greek chiefs. 1 * 3 Why should Andromache have been
safer among the Molodsi, than she could have been else-
where? Is it conceivable that Pyrrhus himself was an
ataman, or at least a molodyets — in other words a Cos-
sack?

12. The mother of Pyrrhus was Deidamia, daughter of
Lycomedes, king of Scyros. On his mother’s side, there-
fore, we may assume that Pyrrhus may have been a Greek.
But was his father, Achilles, also a Greek? We are told
that Achilles and his Myrmidons went to the Trojan War
from Thessaly, which may or may not have been a Greek
land. Why, then, did Pyrrhus not return there after the
war? Could it be that he was prevented from going back
to Thessaly, because Thessaly was not his father’s land,
and the Myrmidons were neither Greeks, nor Thessalians?
What were they then?

13. On two occasions at least Homer makes a clear dis-
tinction between Greeks and Myrmidons, indicating that
these were allies, but nevertheless two distinct people.
After Homer, the distinction is maintained by Quintus
Smyrnaeus. 10 The population of Thessaly was mixed; the
people “were called Myrmidons, and Hellenes and Achai-
ans; of all these even fifty ships, Achilles was captain.”
What is still more interesting is that Homer also mentions
the city of the Myrmidons, taking care not to tell us just
where that city was. 20

14. We find a partial answer to these riddles in the land
of the Cossacks. Strabo tells us (7. 3. 16) that at the mouth

14

of the Tyras river (the Dniestr), there was “what was
called the Tower of Neoptolemus .” We already know that
this was the name given by the Greek to Pyrrhus, the
son of Achilles, king of the Molossians. We now find his
name attached to a tower on the north shore of the Black
Sea. “Again”, says Strabo, “at a distance of five hundred
stadia from the mouth is the island called Leuce, which
lies in the high sea and is sacred to Achilles.” 21 Strabo
goes on to explain that, travelling from here towards the
rising sun, one comes to a treeless place, which is also
sacred to Achilles. “Then comes the Race Course of Achilles,
a peninsula that lies flat on the sea.” (7. 3. 19) We must
ask: What were Pyrrhus and Achilles doing in the Black
Sea and in the Crimea? Could it be that Alcaeus was
right in calling Achilles “ruler of Scythia?” 22 If Achilles
himself was not ruler of Scythia, he stood, at any rate, on
good terms with that ruler. Dictys Cretensis tells us that
when, at Aulis, Iphigeneia was saved from the knife of
of the priest who was to have sacrificed her, Achilles
entrusted her to the king of Scythia, who happened to be
present. 22

15. What about the name Achilles itself? Ptolemy
Hephaistion says that this name was given to the boy by
his tutor Chiron, because Chiron’s own tutor was so
named. 2 * But who was this Chiron? Was he really a
centaur, as some Greek mythographers would have us
believe? What about the fact that in a 14th century Slavonic
version of the pre-Homeric Iliad the name of Achilles
appears as ATSILESH, 2 ' strangely reminiscent of the
name of the great Scythian king of later years, Attila —
in German ETZEL?

16. There is still another detail, of equestrian character,
which is worth noticing, when discussing Achilles. When
it comes to chariots, all our ancient sources feature vehicles
drawn by either two or four hoses. A chariot drawn by two
horses was called by the Romans a biga , one drawn by
four, a quadriga. But how many horses did Achilles yoke

15

to his chariot? Homer tells us that he yoked three horses to
his chariot — two immortal ones and a mortal one — and he
gives us even the names of them. 20 A strange Scythian
troyka, at the first glance but not so strange perhaps, when
we remember that the Race Course of Achilles was to be
found on the Crimean Peninsula.

17. These tantalizing hints make us all the more eager
to find an indication of the spot where we should look for
the city of the Myrmidons. Once more, good old Strabo is
ready to give us a helping hand. “On the left, as one sails
into the Cimmerian Bosphorus”, he wrote, “is a little city,
Myrmecium... and on the opposite side i" situated a
village called Achilleum.” (7. 4. 5) Might this small city
at the easternmost tip of the Crimean Peninsula, not be the
city of the Myrmidons? It might, and it is. Arrian, who
wrote a book on Alexander, in an effort to make the Great
Conqueror look like a Greek, also wrote a book entitled
Circumnavigation. According to a passage in this book,
quoted by Leo Diaconus, Achilles “was the son of Peleus . . .
he was bom in Myrmecium — a small city near the Sea
of Azov — ... he was expelled by the Scythians because
of his savagery, cruelty and arrogant spirit, and . . . there-
upon he took his abode in Thessaly.” 2 '

18. This last testimony is rather significant, for it is in
agreement with a short paragraph in John Malalas. Ac-
cording to Malalas, Chiron was not a centaur, but a king
and a philosopher. He had a daughter, Thetis raised by
the Greeks to the status of a sea-goddess — who was mar-
ried to Peleus, apparently a live-in son-in-law to Chiron,
and a Greek from Thessaly. Achilles was the son of Peleus
and Thetis, and thus a half-Scythian. While arming them-
solves for the war against Troy, the Greek leaders begged
Chiron to let his grandson join the expedition. “And thus”,
says Malalas, “Achilles joined the Atridae as an ally, having
his own army of three thousand Myrmidons — as they
were called at that time, but are now called Bulgarians. 20
This was written by a Syrian chronographer in the second

10

half of the 6th century, a whole century before the founda-
tion of the Bulgarian state.

19. Against this background, many things become easier
to explain. The wrath of Achilles, of which Homer sang,
may have helped the Greeks conquer the city of Troy. Yet
the losses of the assailants were so heavy that they v/ere
all reduced to rags. Upon his return home, Agamemnon was
killed by his wife, Clytemnestra. Diomedes was exiled.
Ulysses and Menelaus wandered abroad for years. Pyrrhus,
obviously, was not welcome in Thessaly, and may have
been both ashamed and afraid to go back to Myrmecium.
This may have been sufficient reason for his flight to the
Epirus, where he found a place to live among the Molodsi
and the Atamani. These people, like all other Thracians
and Macedonians, were related to the Scythians, and spoke
the same language, or at any rate a dialect cognate to that
of the Myrmidons. 20 Pyrrhus must have found this con-
venient.

V. Conclusions

20. All the names which form the object of this study
occur in the Balkan Peninsula, around the Black Sea, and
in Asia Minor, where Thracians and Scythians have lived
since the dawn of history. The Mysians and the Macedon-
ians were Thracian peoples. The story of Achilles and
Pyrrhus gives weight to the casual remark of Nicephorus
Gregoras to the effect that Mysians and Greeks had lived
together in Macedonia from the very beginning. It explains
also how Alexander the Great could claim that he was a
descendant of Achilles — his mother Olympia was a Molos-
sian princess. Yet, if all this is so, the presence of Thraco-
Macedonian, Mysian, Scythian, or simply Slavonic, names
in Greek and Rome antiquities becomes not a surprise, but
the thing to expect. What is regrettable is that so many
other names belonging to this linguistic family have been
lost, or have been so altered as to require a great deal of
patient study, on the part of anyone anxious to restore
their original form. 00

17

APPENDIX

Trilingual List of Names

Slavonic

Latin

Greek

BEJIA 30PA

Bylazora

Byladz6ra

HA CTAHE

Nestane

Nestane

rOPOfl

Gordium

Gordion

KPEMJlb

Cremna

Kremna

MEPEUIA

Cerasus

Kerasos

KOHOn

Conopa

Konopa

BEPA

Vera

Ouera

JlEBEJl

Lebedus

Lebedos

KOJIHBA

Calybe

Katybe

TP'LH

Tarne

Tdrne

OJlEHb

Olenus

dlenos

MOPE M0P03A

Morimarusa

—

3EMJ1H

Semele

Semele

MHJ1HUA

Mylitta

Mylitta

CHJIEH

Silenus

Seilends

UAPHHA

Zarina

Zarina

J1IOBE3EH

Loebesom/Liber

OPEJI

Orolus

Ordlos

JHOflH

Lydi

Lydoi

HEMUbI

Nemetes

—

MOJlOJUlbl

Molossi

Molottoi

ATAMAHbl

Athamani

Athamanes

18

NOTES

1. De originibus Constantinopolitanis, in the Bonn Corpus scriptorum
historian Byzantinae, vol. 3S, p. 23.

2. De lingua latina, V. 3.

3. To make matters worse, 1>1 was reduced, in some Slavonic dialects,
to II or G- As a result, the word "Goths”, for instance, appears in
Slavonic Greek and Latin as J'OTQII. Gothoi, and Gothi, respectively.

4. This is Ihe same name which has been transmitted to us also as
Wallia, when processed by writers dealing with the history of
the Goths.

5. Epitome of Book LXVIII, 29. 3.

6. 3. 3. 7.

7. "Latino sermone dictu faeilia”. X. II. Book III. I. 7.

8. Ibid., Book III. XXI. 139.

9. Critias, 113A.

10. Tiinaeus, 21E.

11. In Pholius, Library, cod. 147a. (Les Belles Lotties, Paris, 1962, t. 3,
p. 54).

12. Origo Gcntis Itoinanao, 6. and 8. 1. (Tcubncr, Leipzig, 1961, p. 9).

13. Giacomo di Pietro Luccari, Copioso Itistrotto dcgli Annuli di Itausa,
Venice, 1605. Book III, p. 103. This book is a goldmine for students
of Slavonic history.

14. It is true that more often this name is spelled Cabyle. However,
such inversions ought not to startle us. Strabo (13. 2. 5 — 6) reports
that Pordoseleno was sometimes spelled Poroselene, and Aspor-
donum, Asporenum — for reasons of propriety. Calybe may have
been changed to Cabyle, for reasons of prestige. (Who wants to
call his city a "hamlet”?) At any rate, Arrian knew a city in India,
whose name was Calyba (Indica, 26. 6). The "Greek” name of the
rock of Gibraltar is said to have been Alybe. (Eutshatius, in Goo-
graphi Graeci Minores, cd. G. MtUler. Referred to by J. G. Frazer
in a footnote to his translation of Appollodorus (II. V. 10)). The
Chalybians were an iron-working tribe in Asia Minor, near the
Black Sea (Strabo, 11. 14. 5 and 12. 3. 19). In those days smelting
was done with charcoal. Both charcoal-burners and iron-workers
lived in huts, in the mountains. The German for hut is "Hiitte”,
while "Huttenwcrk" means ironworks. The reader will draw his
own conclusions.

19

14a. Most manuscripts give the corrupt spelling OLORUS. The correct
spelling OROLUS is given by the Codex Palatinus. See Otto Lusch-
nat’s notes to Thucyd. (Teubner, Leipzig, 1960, p. 4).

15. Correspondence. Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1927, p. 38 — 39.

16. Strabo, 7. 3. 10.

17. Iliad, Book XIII, 3—5.

18. Dictys Cretensis, Ephcmcrides Belli Trojani, Book VI. 15. (Teubner,
Leipzig, 1958, p. 131). For Pyrrhus among the Molodsi see Apollod.,
Eplt. VI. 12.

19. VI. 661, and XI. 223—226.

20. 11 . Book II, 681—685. The “famous city of the Myrmidons’’ is men-
tioned in the Odyssey, Book IV, 10. It has been, excavated in 1935 —
1938. See V. F. Gaidukevich, llaskopki Mirmekiia, Materiali etc.,
Moskovskii Institut Archeologii, No. 25, 1952.

21. Pliny (N. H., Book IV. XIII. 93) says that this island was also called
“Island of the Blest”.

22. Book I, 21. (Less Belles Lettres, Paris, 1960, p. 41).

23. Book I, 22.

24. Op. cit., p. 68.

25. See Fr. Miklofiie, Trojanska I’vica luigarski i latinski etc., Zagreb,
1870.

26. Xanlhos, Podarge and Pedasos. II. XVI, 148 — 154.

27. Histories, IX. 6, in the Bonn “Corpus”, vol. V, p. 35.

28. Chronograph in L. V. (Bonn edition, p. 97).

29. Sallust apparently identified the Getae with the Mysians: “Getae
sunt Mysii, quos Sallustius a Lucullo dicit esse superatos.” See:
C. Crispi Salliistii quae supersunt opera, cura Joannis Hunter,
Edinburgh, 1807, p. 230.

30. That the Slavonic peoples were indigenous to the Balkan Peninsula
has been questioned by no less an authority Ilian Constantin Jos.
JircCek (Gcscliiclitc tier Bulgarcn, Prag, 1876). If this were true,
the Slavonic names in Greek and Roman antiquities would remain
a mystery. However, it can be easily shown that Jii'eCek’s doubts
are unfounded, which I hope to be able to do at some other time.

20

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